Welcome to the Black Arts Movement (B.A.M)The reason why SFSU was chosen as the birthplace of the Black Arts Movement (B.A.M) as a student organization was because some of the leading figures of B.A.M either taught or graduated at San Francisco State University (ex. Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Jimmy Garrett.) A good example of this historical connection is the Black Communications Project (BCP), which helped organize the community, establish community centers, and form the first Black Student Union at San Francisco State University. The Black Arts Movement has been called the sister of the Black Power Movement that arose in the middle 1960s, which called for unity, self reliance, economic empowerment, and race consciousness among Blacks in the United States. The Black Arts Movement became the cultural and political creative outlet of the Black Power Movement raising consciousness during the Black Power Movement. The motivation behind the resurrection of The Black Arts Movement (B.A.M) came from a historical meeting With Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones), Marvin X, Jimmy Garrett and other original founders of the first Black Student Union created in America. The Black Arts Movement (B.A.M) reemerges with a new vision for new generations to creatively infuse multiple forms of Black expressions to explain Black life.
Brothers and sisters B.A.M is the place to be a creative force for social change, here we combine poetry with dance, visual arts with theater, and expand Hip Hop/Rap into theater performances with multilayered subject matter. B.A.M is feeling and form, body and soul, rhythm and movement, a word, and vibrant energy of Black creativity. It is raw in your face theater, random acts of creativity, outburst, and public displays of spontaneous-organized theater. B.A.M uses art as a tool to awaken the conscious to freedom dream, to radically imagine ones freedom through the arts to manifest these dreams of freedom to a physical reality. We believe that the political liberation of Black people is directly tied to their cultural liberation and any organization that fails to understand this well be out of step with the needs of the people.
